Location: Home > food > Grilled Cheese Gadget: The Bacon Press
Grilled Cheese Gadget: The Bacon PressPosted Aug 29th 2005 8:39PM by Deidre WoollardFiled under: Grilled Cheese DayAll these thoughts of grilled cheese took me back to my first summer job at the Centerville Pastry Shop, a little restaurant on Cape Cod. In the heat of summer, we made dozens of grilled cheese sandwiches for vacationing children. Our sandwiches were for the most part simple, slices of bread buttered, each resting on the end of the other as peeled slices of cheese of an industrial brick. The trick was the slight of hand required to get two buttered-on-one-side slices of bread plus cheese assembled and onto the grill without getting the hands too buttery. That and trying to find room on a large grill that was also cooking burgers and bacon. The grilled cheeses were held in place with bacon presses, flipped once and served with potato chips and and a pickle on chipped heavy china, standard diner food. It was after the lunch rush that grilled cheese turned creative. After all the vacationers were sent back to the beach it was time for the staff to eat. Often grilled cheese would be a good choice because is might be the only left on a day in which the special flew out of the restaurant. And like any bored restaurant workers we'd get bored and be experimental. I've eaten grilled cheese and clams, grilled cheese and chicken livers, the inspired and carbtastic grilled cheese and mashed potatoes and the more traditional always-satisfying grilled cheese with bacon and tomato. In the end, the simple grilled cheese, on a hot griddle using the bacon press was always the most satisfying because most stuffed sandwiches could not support the weight of the bacon press without disgorging a bit of their ingredients. These days I prefer my sandwiches bursting at the seams with additions and I know that even if I were to get a bacon press and replicate the sandwiches with the same ingredients I could never quite capture the exact taste made by the dirty grill, the crumb-speckled butter, the room-temperature cheese and the relief of finally sitting down after hours of running around to eat lunch.
|
Artical Related:
Cuban grilled cheese
Makeshift panini press
A brief history of wheat
Two Books About Grilled Cheese
Arepas at home
